The fourth animated movie to follow the adventures of a sabertooth tiger, a sloth and a woolly mammoth, this one follows the unlikely friends as they battle pirates and attempt to return to their loved ones before their home crumbles thanks to shifting ice and crashing rocks as the earth’s continents begin to form.
The trio have already saved a human baby, traversed a flood and even fought dinosaurs in the previous three films (the last unlikely scenario alluded to in a throwaway piece of dialogue here that will make adults chuckle), so this time eyebrows shouldn’t be raised a millimetre when the bad guy turns out to be an orangutan (voiced by Peter Dinklage) whose ship is a large iceberg and whose crew includes an elephant seal (Nick Frost) and a white tigress (Jennifer Lopez).
There are various subplots to navigate – Manny the mammoth’s daughter Peaches is a teenager falling in with the wrong woolly crowd, Sid the sloth is stuck with his sassy and possibly senile granny and Scrat the squirrel is still causing trouble (and even worldwide damage) in his quest for an acorn – but this romps along at a brisk pace, nonetheless. Aimed squarely at the under-10s, it has little to scare (very small children may be frightened by Dinklage’s Captain Gutt) but lots to chuckle at, and it’s written in a way that will entertain and amuse kids even if they haven’t watched any of the previous films.
While there isn’t anything here that you wouldn’t expect, it is nonetheless far better than Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, and funnier than the original 2002 Ice Age. A slick and enjoyable fourth instalment of the frosty franchise.
Is Ice Age: Continental Drift suitable for kids? Here are our parents’ notes...
As mentioned in the above review, under-5s may find the orangutan pirate and his crew a little scary to begin with.
If you like this, why not try: Ice Age, Madagascar, The Wild, The Land Before Time, Over The Hedge,